Archangelic names
-
93,
I can't seem to find a Hebrew spelling for Israfel. Is there an accepted form?
Also... I was checking the name Cassiel/Kassiel, and according to Wikipedia it's correctly spelt QPhTzIAL. The anglicized version of it misses out the Tzaddi. That looks a bit like a temurah of TzPhQIAL. Are they variants of one name, since both are atributed to Saturn or Binah?
93 93/93,
EM
-
@Edward Mason said
"I can't seem to find a Hebrew spelling for Israfel. Is there an accepted form?"
That's because it's an Arabic name - it's not Hebrew in origin at all.
I recommend the spelling on which I based the following poem-invocation, wherein each couplet refers to one letter of the name:
aumha.org/a/poems.php#israfel
The spelling used is YShRPAL."Also... I was checking the name Cassiel/Kassiel, and according to Wikipedia it's correctly spelt QPhTzIAL. The anglicized version of it misses out the Tzaddi. That looks a bit like a temurah of TzPhQIAL. Are they variants of one name, since both are atributed to Saturn or Binah?"
With a Peh???? - The observation about the relationship to Tzafqiel is quite intriguing; I can't say I know the actual origins.
The normal spelling is KShYAL, which is 361 (which has no evident mathematical relationship to Saturn - it's 19 x 19). The spelling you found is, of course, 311 like Tzafqiel and Raphael.
Jastrow's Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud Bab;li, Verushalmi & MIdrashic Literature - a generally useful lexicom of 1st Millennium Rabbinical Hebrew, that lists a lot of angelic names not easy to find elsewhere - does not have KShYAL. (There is the interesting similar word KShYL, keshiyl, which means "a carpenter's tool for chipping - an axe." There are quite a few different words spelled QShY, mostly dealing with hardness and difficulty, but no angel name in the bunch. There is also no name under the spelling you found on Wikipedia.
-
This is intriguing, and I'm not done wrestling with it yet.
Kafziel or Kafsiel shows up in a few places - not counting the proliferation on the Internet apparently in the aftermath of that Wikipedia article.
The form "Cassiel" can be found in The (Greater) Key of Solomon, The Armadel, and The Magus - none of which are older than Medieval times despite claims to the contrary. This does, though, give a certain mid-antiquity to it, particularly because I have yet to find an older Hebrew source for any of these forms,
An observation that intrigues me: The older form of the lower-case "s" was written nearly identical with our "f" - hence the jokes about our nation guaranteeing "the purfuit of happineff." (A double-s generally only had the first one traced this way.) In Barret we can see what surely existed in older documents as well: The spelling "Cassiel" would be written to look essentially the same as "Cafsiel." Now, which one fed the other is a separate question...
I'm still trying to think what pre-Medieval Hebrew source literature I might have that might contain this name.
-
93,
Thanks for the brain-work on this. The Wikipedia article used not to give the QPhTzIAL spelling. I recall checking it out for a friend in another country, and only coming up with Kassiel or Cassiel, without a Peh.
I once tried to read an old book with the f-like s. After two pages, my brain rebelled so that I couldn't stand it.
93 93/93,
EM